A 33 year old male karate practitioner presented himself for a full-contact national karate competition. This individual competed for approximately 2 minutes and received a kick to the head. He collapsed in the competitive arena, and suffered a tonic-clonic seizure, lasting for 3 minutes 25 seconds. Examination in the competitive arena revealed an individual who was unconscious. First aid, and paramedic support was provided immediately.

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"Try to see yourself as you truly are and try to adopt what is meritorious in the work of others. As a karateka you will of course often watch others practice. When you do and you see strong points in the performance of others, try to incorporate them into your own technique. At the same time, if the trainee you are watching seems to be doing less than his best ask yourself whether you too may not be failing to practice with diligence. Each of us has good qualities and bad; the wise man seeks to emulate the good he perceives in others and avoid the bad." Funakoshi Gichin

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Just a note to add: GCS is the standard evaluation for evaluating the severity of a head injury, but LOC (loss of consciousness) does not have to be present to indicate a mild to moderate head injury. Sport coaches often make the assumption that because a player was not knocked out, the impact produced no injury- it just “stunned” the player. The “stunned” effect is an indication of the injury in this case. The fact that LOC did not occur does not mean that an injury did not occur. Retrograde amnesia (anterograde may accompany this) tends to be a more reliable sign that a serious injury has occurred.

It’s worth noting that Phineas Gage, who survived an iron bar of 1-1/4 inches in diameter, three feet seven inches length blasting through his frontal lobes, never lost consciousness from the injury, and was able to walk unassisted to a wagon shortly afterward, despite the obvious severity of the injury. Gage developed severe “convulsive fits” towards the end of his life, 12 years after the accident.

Someone who suffers a seizure, ( as did the young man in the article) of either tonic clonic or temporal lobe/partial/complex partial types, following a head injury is at a much higher risk for suffering more severe seizures later, and/or developing chronic epilepsy in the years to come. If an individual goes into a seizure that does not stop after 5 minutes (status epilepticus ), medical attention must be sought immediately to avoid permanent brain damage or death.